It has begun!

[OcieKo]

Snip

AST is pretty well designed if you remove 4 buttons... Diurnal Sect, Nocturnal Sect, Aspected Benefic, Aspected Helios. Using cards finally sucks a bit less, and not just a 3-6min avg AoE Balance CD juggle. I find I use a lot more of the other 5 now since Im speed phishing less.

Tho I'd be cool if AST was changed into a buff based reactive healer. Think Excogitation from SCH on a crazy scale. One of EQ2s healers did a good chunk this way, can be quite fun. If they really wanna keep the sects... On hit procs another heal, on hit procs a shield. Rawrg trap card healing ><. Tho I could enjoy a debuff based healer, hit enemy get health, tho I think this would be more fun on say... DANcer 5.0 (wishful thinking). Or do both and everyone can fight over when to input the heal and how. HOT ahead of time, Shield ahead of time, heal when hit, or heal when hitting.

Keep in mind all wull still need Cure/Bene/Physick... basic simple heal always reqd.

[Novak_04]

1.) AST would be the pre-eminent HoT/sustain healer;

2.) Subsequently, WHM would have a decent (not all) portion of its HoTs removed to prevent role overlap. They would be the ultimate burst healers instead, with relatively higher mana costs to reflect their power but a whole kit of awesome healing cooldowns

3.) SCH shields would see hefty reductions in mana cost in return for losing some of their redonkulous reactive healing. Shields should BE how they "heal" people; by preventing the damage done in the first place.

So...Astro = WoW's Druid, WHM = WoW's HPriest, SCH = WoW's Disc Priest.

[loreleidiangelo]

So...Astro = WoW's Druid, WHM = WoW's HPriest, SCH = WoW's Disc Priest.

You could conceptualize it that way, yeah, but to be honest those healer archetypes (maybe minus the shielding thing) have been in MMOs as old as EQ. Shaman was a HoT healer and a mezzer, and Clerics had bursty heals and beat people with hammers. They're not schticks limited to just one game. Maybe reusing those archetypes isn't appealing to everyone, but I find the homogenization of abilities we have in this game even less appealing, so I was just offering my opinion.

[Supersun]

You could conceptualize it that way, yeah, but to be honest those healer archetypes (maybe minus the shielding thing) have been in MMOs as old as EQ. Shaman was a HoT healer and a mezzer, and Clerics had bursty heals and beat people with hammers. They're not schticks limited to just one game. Maybe reusing those archetypes isn't appealing to everyone, but I find the homogenization of abilities we have in this game even less appealing, so I was just offering my opinion.

I mean part of it is that there are only so many ways to make a number go up. Slow, fast, adding onto the number before it's subtracted from, there's not exactly a lot of ways to play around with healing so long as the focus of healing is playing tug-o-war with an HP bar and doesn't involve something else such as mitigation which is instead given to tanks for the most part.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Are you for real? AST was a train wreck for early 3.0 progression. If you were holding your raid back in Gordias as a WHM then it was your playing ability that was at fault, not your choice of job.

As far as things stand at the moment, personally I'm seeing the best results with WHM/AST, but I suspect that's as much to do with me being much more comfortable playing WHM over the 4.0 changes to AST as anything else. As much as I love padding and pocketing my DPSers, WHM's brute force gameplay just works for me.

Logs aren't far off, that'll help clarify the current state of play.

Should have clarified, I meant from Creator and on.
Heck even in Midas, I felt the powercreep, but it wasn't so bad. Actually 3.2 was the closest to balance the healers have ever been since HW.

[Kanitezz]

Its the hive mind at work.

[Cidel]

I'm always checking for farm groups and I have never encountered any party that specifically saved both healer spots for ASTs. Maybe once I've seen one spot for an AST though.

You know what I think? I think at worst some party leaders forget to update the PF- because right now its easy to overlook that fact if you aren't familiar with managing PF parties that the person's job who left will be the criteria to join unless you edit it.

[Vyriah]

I'm always checking for farm groups and I have never encountered any party that specifically saved both healer spots for ASTs. Maybe once I've seen one spot for an AST though.

For Farm maybe, but I've alreday experienced searching for kill parties for hours in 3.4 and later, sometime not even playing the actual game for the entire evening because of arbitrary restrictions. Even if it doesn't happen a lot, it's still going to keep some player out of content when raid comes out.

Remember that there's only one place for a SCH in a party, so even if only one is closing the slot for them it means a lot. Leveling another job will give easier access to raid, no matter what. It's common sense, it's not a matter of SCH not being uneffective enough to not clear the content or players being idiots.

[Inuk9]

I'm always checking for farm groups and I have never encountered any party that specifically saved both healer spots for ASTs. Maybe once I've seen one spot for an AST though.

You know what I think? I think at worst some party leaders forget to update the PF- because right now its easy to overlook that fact if you aren't familiar with managing PF parties that the person's job who left will be the criteria to join unless you edit it.

That is what I said in the first pages.

[Averax]

I'd rather go AST/WHM or AST/SCH, honestly. Unless both asts are in voice chat together or are able to type and heal simultaneously, there is no longer any way of telling who has what cards at a given time, and there is a great risk of overwriting.